Scale

I watched some tweets fly by yesterday talking about a power outage that forced Widmer to dump a batch of beer. This kind of thing happens, and while I felt for the brothers, I didn't think a whole lot about it. Until I saw a bit more about it in today's Oregonian. Key graph:

Among those businesses was Widmer Brothers Brewing Co., 929 N. Russell St. Co-owner Rob Widmer said the brewery lost 250 barrels, or the equivalent of 62,000 pints, of Deadlift Imperial IPA, a new brew and its most expensive beer, because of the outage.

Okay, 250 barrels? That's one king-hell lot of beer. That's a quarter of what an average-sized brewpub might produce in a year. To have to dump that much from a lost batch--to be able to dump that much--demonstrates just how big Widmer has gotten. Somehow comparing annual barrelage doesn't grab me the way hearing this news did.